


The Rodriguez Files

by AthenaErrata



Series: The Rodriguez Files [1]
Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:01:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21510919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AthenaErrata/pseuds/AthenaErrata
Summary: Telling the story of the Harry Susan relationship from her perspective. How they meet, how she sees him. It was intended to be canon but its inaccurate. Im working off the audio books and have misremembered bits (came for James Marsters, stayed for Harry). Imagine it will get more explicit but this chapters pretty tame
Relationships: Harry Dresden/Susan Rodriguez
Series: The Rodriguez Files [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1550419
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	The Rodriguez Files

My name is Susan Rodriguez, Im a reporter. I managed to score what should have felt like a pinnacle of achievement fairly soon out of college. I got a job. Yep, I got a real actual paying job on a newspaper. Go me, all those years with the school newspaper and the college paper finally paid off. Except, without contacts – my parents are shop keepers originally from El Salvadore and I grew up in California– the job I landed was at The Chicago Arcane. So Im not really starting on the Wall Street Journal I guess, nor the Los Angeles Times. But you need to know people in the industry, or afford interning, and I couldn’t do either. So I moved to Chicago and am working at the Arcane. It’s a start, but I miss the sunshine. Id like to get into reporting crime or politics, not sure Ive the nerve for foreign affairs and war zones. But I like finding things out and a city like Chicago ahould have plenty going on with crime and politics, so I should be set right?   
Except Im not. It’s a junior post and Im a woman so I mainly run about fact checking for the proper reporters. Especially the crime reporter Dennis, he’s a sleaze but Im finding out journalism’s full of sleazes. He’s ok too. Lets me get on with things, fills me in on the background on the various police departments and he’s even introduced me to a few contacts. That’s better than most of my colleagues. Journalists don’t share, it turns out. Anyway, one morning the sub-editor called me in to offer me my own field. I was super excited, except it turns out I got the option of covering one of the the ‘womens’ fields: arts, fashion, high society.  
‘You don’t seem all that pleased? I thought you wanted more responsibility’  
‘Yes, I do,’ I bit my lip, ‘really I do. Thank you’. I try to sound upbeat.  
‘It’s a step up’ There’s a question in her tone  
‘I know, its just…well if I start doing one of these, it seems like Ill never..’  
Barbara, the sub-editor raised a brow  
‘Well I’ll never get back to covering crime or politics or well..’  
‘But we need an arts correspondent’  
I sighed. ‘Yes and Im grateful. Thank you’  
As I turn to leave the office. Barbara clears her throat. ‘Is it the gender thing?’ She asks  
I hesitate. Barbara was a well-established, highly regarded correspondent in Chicago. She covered high fashion and the arts in the city, before becoming the sub-editor. I didn’t want to insult her or her work. It was great, it just wasn’t..well it wasn’t for me. I look into her face uncertainly, not knowing what to say.   
She waited.  
‘Its not I started, Its not that those aren’t great fields, its just well Im enjoying crime for instance, finding things out that people don’t want found out. I like that Im good at it. In the arts, well designers, artists they give you blurb or you go to shows. I don’t really know anything about art. I don’t have a liberal arts degree. I don’t go to exhibitions and think Ive got something to say thats worth sharing in print. If I start reporting on this.’ I blew out a breath. ‘Well I don’t think I’ll ever really be any good at it.’  
She looked me over her expression hard-to-read. ‘We do need an arts correspondent, maybe you can do a little of that. The other thing we need cover on is the paranormal, but generally we just make that column up. How about you cover that too, perhaps you can do something more with it?’  
The paranormal?!!  
So I become the paranormal reporter at the Arcane (well alongside being an arts correspondent), covering not only Chicago but the entire, Midwest. The Arcane had something of a brand thing going with covering the paranormal. It was something the paper had done since it was first set up a few decades ago. There was a portion of its readership that bought The Arcane specifically for its outlandish stories: Yetis, Elvis sightings, statues that cry bleed or go walkabout, ghosts and all manner of strange occurrances. Because of the paper’s history it gets some serious space, it was part of what our readership expected. But you couldn’t say my colleagues took it seriously. Although looking back through the papers archives there were events we’d covered that just defied any normal explanation. I mean, there’s this one time Milwaukee disappeared!  
The first pre-publication meeting we had after made it clear what a dummy Id been. I’d spent a week chasing up a story that seemed to have a paranormal angle. I’d done interviews with witnesses, taken statements. Done some research to find background. But when I presented it to my colleagues, the titters started before I was even half way through. In blushing humiliation, I carried on, trying to sift the few strands of fact I had managed to acquire from the nonsense and trying to demonstrate how there might be something there that with a bit more investigation could mean a real paranormal story. I felt more and more ridiculous as it went on. Had I totally lost my judgement? It looked to me like some things had happened that just could not be explained when you looked at the detail and other explanations started to look possible. Finally Barbara interrupted me: ‘Susan dear, I know the column is an Arcane tradition, but its not supposed to take up all your time. You just make it up. The new exhibit at the Museum would have been a more appropriate focus for you actual time this week don’t you think?’ Her tone was condescending. Points: Susan 0: Barbara 1.  
I left work that day embarrassed. Some of my colleagues had started mockingly going boo from round corners, or acting as zombies or vampires. Others gave me pitying looks. Clearly Barbara had got her revenge for my spurning her fashion and arts work and shown me up. Why had I been so stupid as to actually seriously try and investigate paranormal occurrences? What an idiot I am, none of them would ever take me seriously again. Why hadn’t I just taken the fashion job and shut my mouth. I like clothes; it could have been fun. I hoped I wouldn’t lose my job. My parents had put so much faith into my ability to write and saved so hard for my education. Ever since getting my qualifications and joining the workforce however I started to wonder whether their faith would ever be repaid in actual success or even decent earnings. Without contacts and connections to get the jobs and the stories was this all just a hopeless dream? I wanted so much to find out the truth about things, things that mattered and were important, ever since I was a child. But with every year that went by would I just get more jaded and realise how childish my dreams had been? This was the real world, paranormal reporting was basically writing fiction for readers who wanted a little thrill in their paper here and there, I should have known that. How was I ever going to make something of myself?  
Dennis came up behind me. ‘Feeling stupid kid?’ he offered. His tone was kind. I tried to shrug it off and say something blasé. Instead I grimaced and shook my head.   
‘I guess I am pretty stupid.’   
‘You’re not. Ive seen you work. You’re just green, but we are all green at the start. You’ve got good instincts, could try using that body you have a bit more, but good instincts.’  
I tried not to visibly shudder. Dennis was always on at me to flirt more to get the information I wanted. Like I said, he’s a sleaze. But his view was I had plenty of disadvantages as a female reporter, I might as well put my assets to better use. And by assets he didn’t mean my brains.  
He saw the shudder and shrug, ‘hey you got it, use it. If you want a tip: try SI for a bit of digging’  
SI?   
And so it was that I started hanging around police stations yet again, but this time on the supernatural beat. Not that SI ever admitted to any supernatural goings on, but there was something strange in the air there alright or my name isn’t Susan Rodriguez. And part of that something strange was the PI they had on retainer. A young man called Harry Dresden. And he was all kinds of strange.

Dresden was an odd man. Young, tall, awkward. I looked into him and found out he had an office across town advertising himself as a wizard. I kid you not. On the door it actually says ‘Wizard’, capital W. He also had an ad in the paper and a PI license. More curiously, he was on retainer with Chicago Police SI department. That makes a girl sit up straight and go huh?  
My investigating into supernatural goings on yielded very little. Sometimes I spoke to witnesses who seemed genuinely frightened. Most of the time I made stuff up to make the little factoids I managed to unearth gell into stories the paper ran. I also started looking into the facts surrounding SI cases. While SI gave bland explanations, probing into the substance of their investigations brought me into contact with people who’d seen weird things. Often they themselves seemed happy enough to take up SIs explanations: gas leaks, power outages. The odd, lone madman who’d been unusually violent – and strong. More often than not they’d shake their heads and say ‘I must have been mistaken’ or ‘I was real tired that day. it was probably nothing’. Rinse and repeat. But I couldn’t let it go. I hadn’t got round to interviewing the ‘wizard’ himself. Id done plenty of those kinds of interviews. Self-declared supernatural types generally seem to run thinly disguised scams. I’d done my share of interviewing mystics, mediums and fortune tellers. Bad outfits, incense that gave me headaches. The Arcane wasn’t in the business of promoting the enterprises of two-bit scammers by covering them in stories. So actually interviewing him took a back seat until we met on a case.   
And meet on a case we did. A country artist called the Arcane to tell them about his haunted house in Branson. There were free concert tickets in the offing so that swung it. When I got there Harry was there. Looming about. Im not sure looming is fair, but he is tall. There’s something foreboding about him. Id never spoken to him, he always seemed really shut away into himself when Id seen him at the station. Eyes half lidded and a look on his face like he’s listening to music no one else can hear. Although he never has any headphones on so that cant be the case. I was covering the haunted house story when Harry came up to the house. The country star was just showing me out having spent a good long while showing me round the house. Explaining the strange happenings in one part then the other, we’d toured the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and a tiny toilet under the stairs. He’d mentioned getting the matter investigated and I managed to snag an interview with both investigators. Both the singer and the second investigator were scared and serious. Going on about the supernatural threat and the definite evil vibes they felt in certain parts of the house. I wasn’t sure. But the interview I had with Harry was something else entirely. That interview was the first thing that made me more certain that I wasn’t going mad - although not because Harry confirmed the evil vibes in the house.  
I met Harry in the local bar a mile or two from the house. Id managed to snag a quiet nook for interviewing him. Id expected him to do his schtick just like the other investigator. Tell me about the evil vibes and all. Instead he shrugged as he ate a portion of fries and said:  
‘Theres nothing there.’  
That was unexpected. He dipped a fry in mustard which made me blink. ‘Er … nothing at all?’  
‘Nothing at all’. His eyes glanced up at my face swiftly and then away.  
‘And you can be absolutely sure about that?’   
‘Yes.’ He said it quietly, certainly, totally unruffled.  
I regrouped. ‘And if there was, you would be sure that you could tell?’   
‘Yes.’   
He gave me that swift glance again, dark intense eyes on my face and gone. ‘Well, most things Id know straight off, unless it’s using a veil, but I could work that out too if I needed.’   
He shook out his long legs and sighed. ‘Long drive, no pay’ he muttered.  
‘You didn’t charge him?’ I quirked an eyebrow, sceptical.  
‘Well, I didn’t need to do anything did I? Cant start charging a call out fee if I don’t do anything. Im not a plumber.’ His mouth quirked on one side. He seemed wryly amused and muttered: ‘would that I were, there’d be hot showers.’  
I frowned wondering what to ask next. I wasn’t prepared for this.   
‘What do you do for SI?’  
If he was surprised he didn’t show it.   
‘I provide expertise.’  
‘As a wizard or as a PI?’  
‘Bit of both,’ he hedged. Then relented, smiling a me a little. ‘Look I can’t talk about that. Non disclosure agreements and all that.’  
I sighed. ‘But you’re a wizard?’  
‘Yes’  
‘What does that mean?’  
‘I can do magic.’ He wiggled his fingers theatrically. I couldn’t tell if the light mockery in his tone was directed at me or himself  
‘You can do magic’ I repeated back. ‘So there is magic?’  
‘Yes’  
He seemed so matter of fact. I felt excitement rush through me like electricity. He wasn’t lying. I felt it. Just like what Id felt with some witnesses. Id felt that they weren’t lying. What they told me was bizarre, impossible, but somewhere in the pit of my stomach I knew, not always but often, I just knew, they weren’t lying. But unlike those witnesses, Harry Dresden didn’t seem uncertain or confused. Scratch that, he seemed totally, calmly, certain. Like he was telling me the weather or what he’d had for dinner.  
He’d gone back to his fries. It was irritating. He was a compelling man. Tall, handsome despite the lean gawkiness. His eyes were so dark, so intense. I could feel them on me, feel the spark of electricity when our eyes met for even the briefest of seconds. I’d felt his gaze on me, assessing cataloguing, intensely taking in every part of me. His hands were long fingered, calloused, but oddly elegant. I shook myself mentally. I was experimenting with using my female wiles when interviewing the way Dennis had suggested. But that wasn’t a route to start crushing on my interviewee. Whenever I start paying attention to a man’s hands that generally means one thing. I had better things to think about than why this tall, dark, brooding man wasn’t paying a bit more notice to me and a bit less to his fries. Down girl.  
So I thought about my next question. It needed to be a good one. ‘Can the supernatural interfere with humans, can such beings hurt humans?’  
That got his attention. He stiffened slightly.   
‘Can they?’  
He seemed to be considering his answer carefully. Like someone wondering how much they can say.   
Try it, try it I urged myself and leaned forward, feeling a bit stupid. Pulling my arms in close I let my cleavage rise clearly into his line of sight (just above the bloody fries) and added a bit of breathiness to my tone. ‘Harry can supernatural beings hurt humans, is that something they can do?’ Make it sexy I intoned inwardly  
It seemed to work  
Uh…he seemed off balance, shooting a glance up at me. He seemed puzzled, curious, a little flustered. I stole a chip from his plate and bit into it deliberately. Going for sexy as hard as I could. I let my thumb trail on my lip, denting it and tasking salt on it. My mouth is my best feature. He seemed to go gratifyingly blank for a moment, staring at my mouth. God this was easier that Id thought, no one has come on to him in a good long while - he seems totally stunned.   
‘Well, yes’ he said. Then he regrouped (the bastard) saying ‘look if you want to talk about the supernatural how about you come by my office. Ive got some leaflet with information for the public.’  
‘When?’  
‘Thursday say 2pm?’ I smiled at him again, doing my best to make it sultry. His eyes were on my mouth again. Oh yes, if I was attracted to him, he was also attracted to me! Before I could think about it I rushed on: ‘Ive got a pair of tickets for the concert tonight, Im covering it for the Arcane. Want to come be my date?’  
‘No!’   
He said it so quick I winced. Startled at the rejection. My sex kitten persona seemed to dissolve into a little puddle of feeling stupid and I flushed, embarrassed. He caught my reaction and his voice softened. ‘No I cant, I don’t ..er..I don’t do concerts..electronics...’ He sighed and rubbed at his face. ‘Its not…’ he looked bewildered, ‘..its not that I wouldn’t want to spend time with you… youre…’ he hesitated unsure.  
‘Really? You’d like that?’ I asked looking down.   
‘Yes really,’ he said gently. His eyes were on me, searching, concerned. I could bloody feel them. I wouldn’t normally have looked up when feeling this level of embarrassment. But this time I just did. I looked up and looked straight at him, into his eyes. I felt something, something big. And then suddenly I was somewhere else.

I was in a room, everything was stone. It was a cave or a cavern. It was dark. There were strange lights glowing and torches flickering. There was a circle of men standing in a group. They were wearing robes and holding staffs. Whatever was going on it felt serious. They took no notice of me. I edged forwards to move among them. It seemed like I was invisible. In the middle of the circle of robed men and women was Harry Dresden. He was on his knees, his hands bound in front of him with rope. A black sack-like, hood covered his head entirely, but I recognised his tall frame and hands. His body looked stiff with tension, his head bowed in defeat. Directly ahead of him stood an old man with a long white beard. ‘Wizard’ I thought immediately. He looked like wizards in storybooks do. Except for his face, set in stony disapproval with no trace of kindliness. To one side stood a tall cloaked man with a thin face and a huge sword. The cloak was grey. I looked around at the group, they were all cloaked but all looked so different. They weren’t all men, there were women too. A tall black woman, a man who looked like he was native American. A man with what looked like denim overalls under his cloak?! White beard spoke: ‘the penalty for a warlock is death’. His curt nod to the man with the sword was a command. The man stepped forward taking the hood off Harry in a swift motion and raised his sword. Harry’s face was dirty and streaked with what might have been tears. But I didn’t get to see it for more than a second. The tall man raised the sword and cut Harry’s head off at the neck. There was so much blood. It spurted in time with Harry’s final heartbeats, once, twice, three times. Spraying the room, staining the floor. His lifeless corpse fell to one side.  
I screamed in horror, screamed in terror. 

I came to in the bar. Harry was holding me where I’d fainted off my seat. Looking into my face in concern. ‘Susan, Susan?’ The bars patrons were looking at us, but I couldn’t have been out for long, no crowd had gathered. ‘She’s ok’ I heard Harry say, ‘she just fainted, she’s ok.’ He sounded worried. I looked around wildly confused. I clutched at Harry, testing he was real. Youre alright? youre alright!’ He looked troubled. ‘Yes Im fine, Im sorry. I don’t know what you saw but clearly it was bad.’ He grimaced, looking away. He seemed ashamed and upset. He righted me in my seat, propping me up like a doll. He rubbed at his face. ‘Can I get you something? Water?’   
He got up and got some before I even had a chance to say anything. When he handed it to me, I noticed his had shook slightly. I breathed deeply a few times. ‘That was a soulgaze,’ he said quietly. ‘It happens when you look into a wizards’ eyes too long.’ I jerked my eyes away from his face. ‘It only happens once’ he reassured me. ‘Its done now.’ He stood, stepping away from me deliberately. Something formal entered his tone: ‘Im sorry. What you saw obviously wasn’t good. I don’t mean you any harm, I’d like to help, you’ve had a shock. I didn’t mean for this to happen. But if you want me to go I’d understand.’  
I breathed in and out, in and out. Remembering the gush of blood, the lifeless body. And his look of utter defeat at the centre of that circle. I felt my stomach rise like I would vomit. I closed my eyes. When I opened them he was still there, but a good pace away, shame on his face. I stared at him not knowing what to say.   
‘Your soul was lovely,’ he said quiet regret in his voice. He didn’t say that he wished his had been too, but he didn’t need to.   
‘Is what I saw the truth?’  
‘Yes,’ he said even more quiet. ‘A soulgaze shows only the truth.’  
The horror on my face made him flinch. ‘Im sorry,’ I said. ‘So what I saw is what will happen to you? Is it your future?’  
A small furrow appeared on his brow. ‘Umm.. not necessarily. Its not fortune telling. A soul gaze is more..well.. it’s complicated but its seeing something true about a persons character, about their soul, different people experience it differently.’ He tailed off. I took a shuddering breath. I felt tears gather in my eyes. He came forward hesitantly and offered me a handkerchief.  
‘I saw you beheaded.’ He take a sharp breath looking down. He nodded. ‘Im sorry.’  
‘Youre sorry, you didn’t behead yourself! These creepy men did it!’ I burst out. Something like a laugh choked him. He took my hands. ‘I guess you saw my true fear. I did something bad a few years ago. I got.. its..like a suspended sentence.. the Doom of Damocles. If I take a step out of line well..’ he closed his eyes, one of his hands made a chopping gesture. ‘I guess Im more afraid of it than I admit, even to myself.’ I nodded.   
‘Are you ok?’  
‘Yes, well no, but I will be.’   
He smiled briefly. ‘Yes, well, life goes on doesn’t it? He remarked.   
‘Life goes on’ I echoed. But I stared at him many realisations suddenly coalescing in my brain as it came back online. ‘But now I know, its real.’  
He walked me out to my car and sat me in it. Id stopped shaking by then.   
Youll be alright to go home?  
Im going to check into my hotel, go to the concert later, but I’ll be fine’  
‘Okay’  
He dug his hands into his duster pockets. ‘Will you come round my office on thursday?’ His tone was carefully neutral.  
‘Its my first really real lead, of course I’m coming round your office on thursday!’  
He smiled then, properly smiled and I realised any smile Id seen from him so far was just an echo of this. It made him beautiful.   
‘Okay then’ he said, ‘I look forward to it.’  
And then he walked off towards a car at the other end of the lot. It was the most ramshackle Volkswagen beetle Ive ever seen. 

Stupid thing is though that the next Thursday he’d kind of disappeared again. I went to his office and found him behind a desk. Coffee made, place neat as a pin, but tatty. Business couldn’t be great. He gave me leaflets but refused to talk about any of the police related cases. I asked lots of questions, flirted my ass off partly because I hoped it would help with work, partly because well, he’s cute and my heart went out to him. I liked him: this strange, withdrawn man with a death sentence hanging over him, who didn’t charge folk for advice they didn’t need and said my soul was lovely. But it was like the shutters had gone down.   
Eventually he said: ‘Look Miss Rodriguez, the supernatural is dangerous and I don’t want to get you into danger. I might be able to comment here and there if you want to check out facts you’ve dug up. But if I give you information Id be responsible for what you do with it and I just cant put you or anyone else at risk…’  
‘But Harry,’ it came out plaintive. I was surprised at how much the refusal stung. It felt like rejection. I’m a journalist, I get refused a dozen times a day. I thought I was over that. But when it came to Harry Dresden clearly not. He stood up and strode to the door in a handful of long-legged strides. ‘Miss Rodriguez’ he held it open like some olde worlde gentleman using the formality to distance himself, to distance us.   
‘I’ll be back’ I tried to tease to lighten the tone but it sounded strangled around the lump in my throat, His face remained set in stony determination. I would be back, I’d wear him down. I swore it to myself.


End file.
